Hurdler's Race to be Mortgage-Free

Hurdler

Wow set - just did a batch cook of veggie soup - largest volume of any I have tried so far ... It is not a large pan ... It's a VAT!!!!!

It wouldn't surprise me if I got 6 portions out of that .. And I need to do another one tomorrow to use up some defrosted coconut milk!

Have managed to just spend on a cab home yesterday, and 41p for carrots for the soup today!!!

Tomorrow I will try and sort out my overpayment for November so that it comes off the balance that shows at the end of the month.

Weigh in at the gym tomorrow - really hope I have got back to where I was last month when my knee flared up.

Hurdler

Another batch of soup done this evening, cos I needed to use up a 1/4 can of coconut milk I had defrosted. That's enough now for at least 2 weeks before I even need to think about anymore.

What I do need, however, are the magic pixies to come and clean the blender for me afterwards!!!

They don't seem to stock the in Lakeland. I looked!

Hurdler

So have been really lax in all things financial - so yesterday I finally got all my company accounts together and sorted - expenses, payroll slips, invoices, the works. There's only ONE thing I NEED to do and that's to tidy up the expenses I have paid myself... but that's for when I pay myself in the new year! I only had enough this month to pay myself and not cover the expenses.

In terms of journalism - I am led to believe that my year plan for my first client is ok - but as yet nothing formal from him... we're hopefully chatting tomorrow - and I think I will get in a pre-emptive message. One of the things I want to change is invoicing at the end of the month when work has been done/reviewed/published. That way I KNOW if I am getting stuff. What happened initially was that I pre-invoiced, and then there were several months where things were rejected out of hand, or not published because of funds diverted to other projects, resulting in credit notes and worse, no work at all from him since September. With people in paid employment writing for free... (and I am finding this trying to develop a client base for Case Study and White Paper writing)... it's making it hard to sustain.
I am going to set up on things like people per hour but quite often non-English off-shored peeps under cut and charge ridinkidonk rates to get the work... one of my friends ended up charging £7 an hour just to win something that was worth at least £25-30 per hour.

I hope to get an extension on the self-study Intermediate course and apparently they got some hits on the site from my first blog for them... so that was good.

I hope to do a few bits of consultancy with the firm I did some content stuff for... and got a bit of a peculiar note back from a blog I wrote on their behalf from the "marketing exec" who wasn't sure whether she wanted to mention another consultancy... not sure why they are trying to promote industry blogs and have other people making FREE contributions to their site if they only want to promote their own... maybe there's an opportunity for me to try and drive traffic to their site as I did for the first client! As they seem to be a bit confused as to how to jump on the blogging bandwagon!

BUT... I am also going to start applying for contract jobs.
The haphazard nature of freelance writing is sustainable for a few months with the final bit of my redundancy money, but I have learnt some valuable lessons ... and the name of the game is having a buffer, and more importantly maintaining it.
I get a lot of promises of work, but you are constantly at the behest of other financial priorities.

Annoyingly one of those CV sites did a "free" evaluation of my CV, gave me some vague advice and then wanted to charge me £180 to re-do my cv. What they DON'T know is that they are paying my mate £10 a CV (!) to take what they're given and put it into a CV template!!!! So in the New Year, I am going to treat myself to a visit to Pompey and get my friend to help me, and pay her a decent whack!

A very wise MFW friend told me to hang on to that last £20K and not throw it at the mortgage... and what amazing advice that was.

In a bid to uncomplicate my life a little, I am going to open a new current account at my bank and close my Black Horsey flat-letting account. I have gone in repeatedly this year to try and get my telephone banking reset and to get a new pack of information... nothing.
Bit by bit, I want to transfer all of the DDRs out to that account so that none of it hits my main account and it seems to be easier for my bank to sort those payments out.

I intend to keep writing... if only as a hobby or to wait for that all important break into sports writing.

I have dosh to pay in to my mortgage that I just didn't get round to (tsk) so will update my house and sig at the end of the year, and try and be a bit more consciencous next year.

Have a merry christmas everyone, especially the friends I have made on this thread.
Thanks for reading and see you all in 2013.

:beer:

Mortgage_Reduction_Novice

Hang in there Hurdler... you never know what's round the corner... or how big the corner is... but something will come from it all in 2013.

Hurdler

Wow - well I really have been lax about my MFW-ness!
Just a quick notelette as I am knee deep in company finances... I am SURE that pile of receipts keeps growing (and the income is sadly not ...)

So... what have I been up to?

• FINALLY trapped a mate in a corner for long enough for us to join forces and start BritWatch Sports
• Managed to finally get the managing editor at SportsBeat (agency attached to my journo school) to sponsor my membership to the Sports Journalists Association of GB ...
• Applying for the prestigious International Press Accreditation card and hoping to cover The French Open tennis (there go A LOT of my savings unless I can snaffle some freelance work at the same time)
• Looks like my "main" job is starting up with these quarterly reviews. I met my editor who has lots of grand ideas, but he changes his mind a lot, so until I actually have money in the bank... pinch-of-saltsville
• I DID manage to persuade one of the governing bodies in my techie sphere to pay for me to write a piece for their quarterly publication - funnily enough editor of the review stuff seemed a little miffed, but if he's not paying me, what does he expect?
• A Vendor has asked me if I want to go to Las Vegas, all expenses paid for their show. Umm ok then, if I must
• Another vendor has asked me for my prices to write for them - waiting to hear back from them
• The lovely people who are giving me free ITIL education (more techie-speak) very very kindly extended my course AGAIN and seem all set for them to have a continuing blog all the way up to expert. This is my fallback if this writing malarky doesn't kick off
• leads out there for other work, and an old colleague also-turned-writer is doing my CV for me with the latest and greatest format... for a lot less than an irritating CV site is suggesting I pay...

And over the past few months, I have managed to snaffle away enough to make two additional months payments to my mortgage.
I will do all my stuff (bills, mortgage, paying myself from the company) on the 6th, and THEN I will try and sort out my poor Excel House...and I promise I will try and check in more often ....

Cheers :beer:

misscousinitt

Good to see you.

Keep going and we hope to see you about a bit more.

I see that the paperwork gremlins have got to you aswell!

MCI

Hurdler

misscousinitt wrote: »

Good to see you.

Keep going and we hope to see you about a bit more.

I see that the paperwork gremlins have got to you aswell!

MCI

Sweet Lord up in the fluffy clouds... it took all the time that Italy took to beat the Frenchies to finally get to the bottom of it, with a bit of Twister on Sky Movies, until JUST before Dancing on Ice!

I feel chair-shaped!

Oh - looks like the Israel-based vendors want me to write 4 articles for them... maybe monthly - so that is a bit of a relief.

Grr - the council is paying for the family two doors down to have a new loft extension put in. What is really irritating is the banging feels like it is coming through my wall and a pain when I am trying to study/revise.

BTW - anyone know of any decent way of making interactive flashcards in powerpoint?

Hurdler

Finally caught up with my house... and have been able to squirrel away some money...



Poor Vernon is very depleted (as is my redundancy fund month on month, sigh!)



Because I hadn't actually been chipping away at the bricks monthly while having an unexpected "sabbatical"... I managed to put away 2 full months worth so knocked the last payments for 2033 effectively OFF the top of the house!

Looks like a vendor wants me to do 4 articles a month for them (what I got knocked down to by my main editor, who then stopped altogether) - so it should be enough to cover about 2/3rd of the bills and if the main site I work for starts the reviews soon, then I will have enough to maybe top up my car account (MOT and tax due soon) and then make some payments on a more regular basis - wherever possible a full month).

Another client may have some contract work for 3 months or so in the spring, so maybe that might be an opportunity to go back into the "field" and have some more money to put aside...

All a lot of mights... not much in the ways of wills... sigh.

Hurdler

And so it was thus... the start of at least 3 months money... sigh!
A lot of writing work coming in, an exam to revise for and an anxious wait to see if I get press credentials for the tennis in France!

I am in the midst of doing the monthly finances, beer in hand... and housey + Vernon will get a face-lift as I chip away at a few more bricks...

Hope everyone else is making strides in their OPs....

Hurdler

Grrr Thames Water were supposed to be fitting my water meter today, but they just phoned up to cancel.

Next available date (as I am NOT giving up an evening to accommodate them) is 3rd April.

They had better back date it, as I was all set to be working off a meter today.

Useless toads... they really are clueless that it means re-arranging a lot of things to accommodate them.

Grrr.